


and in my hands i hold your light (and in yours breathes my soul)

by EllaYuki



Category: Fairy Tail
Genre: Developing Relationship, Domestic, F/M, Fluff, Light Angst, Nalu Week, Nalu week 2020, Pre-Relationship, Tanabata
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-01
Updated: 2020-07-07
Packaged: 2021-03-04 17:55:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 2,546
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25020493
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EllaYuki/pseuds/EllaYuki
Summary: Random little moments at random points in their life.NaLu Week ficlets, 2020 edition.Each Day has its own summary. Tags will be added accordingly with each installment.
Relationships: Natsu Dragneel/Lucy Heartfilia
Comments: 6
Kudos: 60





	1. Day 1: Voice (soothing like a summer breeze)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Natsu can't sleep. So, naturally, he goes to Lucy for help.

It’s a rare thing that he can’t sleep, rarer still that insomnia hits when there’s no impending battles or exciting adventures to get his adrenaline kicking. 

No, tonight is a normal night, he’s just got back to Magnolia from a mission (and a moderately simple  _ -boring- _ one at that), he’s had some fun at the guild, and then got home and decided to crash. 

And has been tossing and turning for the past hour.

_ It’s friggin’ annoying. _

It’s even worse that Happy is happily snoring away in his own little bed two feet away. Natsu looks at the clock on the wall. It’s not even midnight yet.  _ Right. A visit’s in order, I guess. _

~

The light in Lucy’s apartment is low as Natsu climbs up to her open window. That means she’s getting ready for bed.  _ Perfect _ .

“Hey, Lucy,” he greets as he steps into the room, knocking on the window sill. 

Lucy is sitting up in bed, her reading lamp the only source of light. There’s an open book in her hands. When she looks up, there’s a brief flash of something passing through her eyes, before she sighs and lifts the corner of her duvet. Then she proceeds to ignore him in favor of her book.

Natsu grins and kicks off his shoes, hangs his dragonscale scarf by the back of the armchair, before getting in bed next to her.  _ Damn, Lucy’s bed is soft _ . The scent (Lucy and books and him and home) is calming as always. (He doesn’t think about why that is.)

It still isn’t  _ quite  _ enough.

“Hey Lucy?” he says, after a few minutes. 

She hums in answer, turning a page. “What is it?”

Natsu shifts, turning to face her properly. “Can you read something to me?”

Finally, that makes her turn her head, take her attention away from whatever story those pages hold. “Read you something?” She raises her eyebrow. 

“Mm. Can’t sleep. So.”

There’s a moment of silence, in which Lucy just  _ looks  _ at him. He looks back at her. They don’t always have to voice things between them.

“Alright,” she says at last. “Do you want me to read you anything in particular?”

Natsu shrugs. “Nah. Just read from whatever’s in that book. I just want to hear your voice, it’ll help me fall asleep.” Lucy blinks at him at that, her face turning a bit pink  _ (because she’s weird like that,  _ Natsu thinks), but doesn’t comment on it.

“Okay, so…” she starts, and the words flow like a stream. 

The story isn’t anything that’d normally interest him, more Lucy’s romancy taste, people meeting randomly and falling in love too quick to be believable, and then angsting over it. Natsu prefers Lucy’s adventure stories more. 

But her voice, low and steady and warm, is soothing like honey. Every word takes a little bit of his restless energy away with it, until Natsu can barely keep his eyes open anymore.  _ Ah, _ he thinks vaguely, as he sinks further and further,  _ yep, just the thing I needed _ .

He falls asleep on that thought.


	2. Day 2: Regret (this failure that scratches ar my innards still)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Even years later, Natsu still has _feelings_ about not being able to save the future version of Lucy.

There isn’t a day (though he would never admit it to anyone, even Happy), especially when on missions, or when shit hits the fan on a large scale, when he’s not reminded of her, and when he’s not being eaten by guilt and regret.

Lucy, his Lucy, the one he’s known since that day in Hargeon, the one he  _ knows _ and loves and would rip the world apart for, is still here, still alive, still smiling, still complaining about the most random of things, and yet not backing down or away from whatever it is that has her complaining.

_ She  _ is  _ still alive _ .

And yet, it’s  _ still  _ eating him, months,  _ years _ later, gnawing at his insides, that he could save that future (broke n, lonely, and  _ still shining)  _ version of her. That she died right in front of his eyes and he was utterly powerless to stop it.

(Once, he wonders if the other him, the future him,  _ her _ version of him, died with his own regrets. If he’d died knowing he’d never be able to protect her again. 

Natsu shudders at the thought and pushes it away violently.)

“What’s got you so quiet?” Lucy’s voice cuts through the swirling maelstrom of his thoughts.

“Hm?” He looks up, blinking away the haze that’s settled over him without his noticing. He shrugs. “Nothin’ much.” He’s not telling her any of that. Not ever.

Lucy looks at him, eyebrow raised, and for a split second, in the space between one heartbeat and the next, he sees the other her with her tired smile. He shakes his head to dispel the image. She’s gone.  _ His  _ Lucy is  _ still here _ . “Is that so,” she says. She’s the one shrugging this time, heaving a breath. “Then get up. I’ve got us a mission.” 

That does the trick, pulling him firmly back into the here and now. 

“A mission?” He grins, standing up. “Let’s get going then!"


	3. Day 3: Flirt  (there's always a first time for anything)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There's a dude sitting a little too into Lucy's space at a bar, so Natsu decides to do something about it.

"Hey," he says, walking up to the bar and leaning against it with his brightest grin. "Fancy seeing you here!"

Lucy whirls around, surprise and then relief flashing behind her wide eyes in quick succession. "Hey," she answers, and there's something in the way her shoulders relax that screams of her previous discomfort. "Hey, wow, hey. Haven't seen you in forever! How've you been?"

Natsu shrugs one shoulder casually. "Ah, you know. Same as always. You? All by yourself tonight?" He spares a moment to look around the bar, before settling back on her. He can see the other guy sitting by Lucy's far side, bristling with prissy indignation.

"As you can see, she's not-" he starts, voice a little too loud, a little too scratchy to Natsu's eardrums.

Lucy cuts him off though, ignoring his presence altogether. " _ Yep _ ." The guy makes an offended noise. Natsu raises an eyebrow at him, but other than that, he, too, ignores his existence. " _ All alone _ ." And then, she adds, voice a bit lower, a bit like warm honey, " _ Well _ . Not anymore, now that you're here." 

She's playing with a lock of her hair, twirling it absentmindedly (he  _ knows _ it's anything but) around a finger. The smile blooming on her face is equal parts soft and playful. He grins, wide and toothy (like he knows she's secretly fond of).

"Oh?" Natsu says over the Annoying Dude' huff, and his mumbled 'whatever', and his subsequent departure. "What a coincidence. I was by myself, too, before you popped up in front of me from nowhere."

_ Lucy's nuisance is gone, and we can stop pretending. We could. _

Lucy giggles, half hidden behind her hand. Her cheeks are pink

_ (But this is kind of fun.) _

~

"Thanks. That guy was a headache waiting to happen."

"I figured. I could smell your irritated embarrassment from across the room."

"Yeah, well, his… flirting, if we could even call it that, was kind of making my skin crawl."

"Flirting makes your skin crawl? Weirdo."

"Uh, flirting in general? No, not really. But that guy? Ugh. Just.  _ No _ ."

"I see. Good to know."

"What's that supposed to mean? Natsu? Natsu! _Come back here!"_


	4. Day 4: Note  (i know these words are not enough)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Natsu gets ready to leave for his post-Tartarus training trip. First order of business? Write a note to Lucy.

"What about Lucy?" Happy had asked earlier, and Natsu had had to stop himself, forcibly, from telling his friend that  _ of course  _ she would be coming with them.

Because the thing is, she  _ can't. _

_ This, _ this trip, this journey, is one Natsu has to embark on his own, if he wants to actually get anywhere. (He's a hypocrite, he knows, because Happy is going with him, but Happy is Happy. Happy isn't just his friend.)

(Lucy isn't, either, but Natsu doesn't like thinking about that. It brings a weird feeling in his stomach whenever the thought crawls across the back of his mind.)

He lets Happy take care of his own part of the packing as he hunts for a scrap of paper and a pen through the mess on his table-slash-desk.  _ What should I tell her?  _ he wonders as he finally finds some clean stationary and something to write with.  _ She's gonna be pissed off either way I try to explain it, though. Hmm… _

**_Happy and I are going on a training trip,_** he writes, thinking over the plan he and Happy have made. **_And we'll be back in about a year or so._**

**_So take care of everyone, alright?_ **

**_See ya, Lucy!_ **

He signs it **_Natsu & Happy_ ** , and after he rereads it, he nods to himself. That should do it.

(It's not nearly enough, he  _ is  _ aware, but it's all he can bring himself to write right now, flippant as it might be.)

She's going to be upset, he knows. 

But he also knows that the past week he's had a difficult time looking at her and not seeing that other version of her dying, he can't look at his scarf and not see Igneel dying, he can't look at his guild and see everyone he has failed to protect and wonder when he's going to fail the rest of his friends, too, because he's not strong enough. 

He digs up an envelope and his sealing wax. 

As he slips the note in, and seals it, he hopes she’ll understand. 

(Eventually, she will.

She’ll still be upset, though.)


	5. Day 5: Quirk  (this silly part of you i love)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lucy has this thing that she does when she writes. Natsu has noticed.

She tends to bite her lower lip when she writes.

It's something Natsu has noticed at some point, although if anyone were to ask him when, exactly, he can't really say. It's just something he knows.

It doesn't matter what she's writing, whether it's something for her book, or if it's a note, or even a grocery list, Lucy will take her lip between her teeth and gnaw at it until she's either done jotting down whatever she's jotting down, or she winces in pain when she's sunk her teeth in a little too hard or a little too long and blood starts flowing.

(Natsu has moments when he wants to sink his own teeth into that lip, but that is weird, even for him, and so he doesn't.)

"You're gonna bloody your lip," he tells her one evening, while he's hanging out in her apartment and she's scribbling some notes in one of her notebooks.

Lucy blinks up at him, bewildered, plump (and very red) lip caught once again under one of her canines. "What?"

Natsu huffs a breath and reaches over to tug with his thumb at the worried skin. "You're chewing on it again."

Lucy's eyes widen, and then her entire face goes red. She jumps back. (She always jumps back when he gets that close, lately. Yet another thing he's noticed.) "O-oh," she stutters, rubbing a hand against her mouth. "I didn't notice."

"Mhm, I could tell." He sits back, crosses his arms behind his head. "You were off in your head."

Lucy looks at him, and then down at the notebook in her hands. "I had some ideas for the book. I needed to write them down before I forgot them. Sorry, you were here to hand out."

This time, when she bites her lip again, it's not in concentration, but guilt. Natsu lowers his arms, then reaches over and pokes her between her eyebrows. "Stop being weird. I don't mind. Finish writing, I can wait."

Lucy deflates a little. "But you'll be bored."

He shrugs, and settles against the back of her couch more comfortably. "If I said I can wait, then I can wait."

Lucy looks at him for a little longer, without saying anything, before she nods and goes back to her task. 

Her lip is back between her teeth almost instantly.

Natsu says nothing this time.


	6. Day 6: Charm  (tiny reminder of you and me)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There's something dangling from Lucy's miniature communication lacrima that catches Natsu's attention.

He looks at the small trinket hanging off of Lucy's miniature communication lacrima and blinks. _Isn't that the one…? It is, isn't it?_ he thinks as he takes in the little flaming star.

He reaches over the table, fingers poking vaguely at it. Same size, same shape, same orange gold color. _Yep_.

"What is it?" Lucy asks, pulling the lacrima a bit away from his probing fingers.

Natsu leans a bit forward and grabs at her hand and brings it closer to his face to better inspect the phone charm. "That looks familiar."

Lucy hums in question, eyes going from him to the lacrima now cradled in both their hands. "What does?" Then, her eyes land on the charm, and her cheeks go red. "Oh."

"Thought you threw it away."

Lucy shrugs, and she looks away, embarrassed. (It's both cute and hilarious.) "Was going to," she mumbles, pulling her hand out of his, and cradling it and the trinket to her chest. 

Natsu looks at her, and for a moment, he wants to tease her for being sentimental over a little piece of plastic. But then he remembers all the little bits and bobs he's saved over the years, from missions, and from other random moments of his life. This little charm, one that he got from a street vendor at a fair over a month ago and gave to her because he'd thought she'd like the reminder of her Celestial Spirits, is a tiny thing compared to his collection. 

"Told you it'd go well on your lacrima," he says in the end, grinning and crossing his arms behind his head.

Lucy looks at him, still pink-faced, and bites her lip. "Yeah, it's cute." Her eyes are soft as she looks first at the dangling charm, and then at him.


	7. Day 7:  Smile  (we will not be star-crossed)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> On Tanabata, Natsu takes a moment to contemplate the stars.

He ties off the little scrap of paper with his wish, his hopes, on one of the bamboo branches, and looks up at the star-studded sky.

He never used to think much about it before, never used to care about it, the night sky with its sparkling diamonds set into its dark canvas. It was just there.

He's learned to appreciate it now.  _ It matters now. _

The bamboo leaves in the branches by his head rustle softly, and Natsu looks over in time to see Lucy tying off her own tanzaku. She closes her eyes for a long moment, and Natsu watches as the lights from the lighting lacrimas floating around them dance across her skin.

She looks like she belongs up there with the stars. Which, admittedly, fair enough, he guesses. (He won't let the stars have her, though. She belongs down here with Fairy Tail. With him.)

When she opens her eyes, they meet his own through the leaves, and the smile that blooms on her face leaves him breathless.

Lucy smiles, always. Even when she's sad, even when she's sick, even when she's hurt. She smiles. And it's always had an impact on Natsu (even at first, when he didn't know her, didn't -or pretended not to- care about her).

But there's  _ something _ about this one.

It's different. Something about it is different from any of the ones before, and Natsu can't even  _ start _ putting his finger on what  _ exactly _ is different about it.

It does pull his own grin up to the surface, though.

And as Lucy steps through the bamboo shoots and to his side, he can't help wrapping his arm around her and pulling her closer. 

"Hey," he says, and breathes her in.

"Hey," she answers, and rests her head against his shoulder. 

Their smiles remain, bright, carefree, for the rest of the evening.


End file.
